U.S. President Barack Obama gestures to the crowd to be quiet as he walks onto the 18th green at Mid-Pacific Country Club in Kailua, Hawaii. Photo: REUTERS

Someday, somebody not from Hollywood will make a movie about President Obama’s disastrous vacation. About how his aides waited for nearly three hours after the Christmas airliner attack to wake him. About how he waited three more days to appear publicly. About how even then, he didn’t grasp the seriousness of the situation, racing through a bloodless speech so he could play golf.

Until that film is made, reality is frightening enough. Even the true believers in the White House now realize they blew the response to a potentially catastrophic attack by an al Qaeda-trained terrorist.

When the alarm first went off — the 3 a.m. phone call — they hit the snooze button, putting the president’s personal comfort ahead of the country’s.

Everything since has been damage control, including yesterday’s endlessly advertised meeting with his national security team. Obama’s remarks afterward were direct and forceful, but the door of doubt about his national security leadership has been blown off the hinges.

The images that stick are the ones out of Hawaii, with the president in vacation mode — no tie, a perfunctory appearance on Dec. 28, no questions, then off for more fun in the sun. Behavior doesn’t get less serious or more callow.

The images accurately reflect a troubling mindset that borders on religious faith about how to combat terrorism, with Obama himself the high priest. He is a war president who defiantly shuns the mantle.

So be it. The Oval Office and the choices are his. And so is the responsibility.

If America gets hit again, it’s on him. All of it.

Obama often complains about the problems he inherited from George W. Bush, but he also inherited a record of zero successful attacks on America after 9/11. If Islamic terrorists succeed on his watch, he can’t blame Bush.

Not after he has made a series of important choices that make the country less safe than it was. Dick Cheney is hardly alone in this belief.

From prosecuting CIA agents who acted in good faith to freeing Gitmo prisoners to putting Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York’s civilian courts, Obama is fighting the war on terror his way. His continuing determination to close Gitmo smacks of a dogma untroubled by facts or common sense.

It is his burden. He and he alone will own the results, just as Bush will go down in history as the president who failed to connect the dots that could have prevented 9/11.

In theory, Obama knows as much. In practice, it is hard to imagine how he would live with himself if the vast security apparatus constructed since that awful day failed on his watch, leaving thousands, perhaps tens of thousands dead.

Would he second-guess himself? Would he wonder if there was something he could have or should have done?

He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t. Yet how then to explain his determined willfulness to test the limits of the enemy’s good will? How to explain his trust in a rational reaction from people who have repeatedly demonstrated their fanatical adherence to a murderous cult?

Even now, as he sends 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, he rolls out the welcome mat at home. The offer of a lawyer, a plea bargain and the presumption of innocence to the Nigerian who tried to blow up 300 people over Detroit is exactly what the far-left ideologues of the American Civil Liberties Union would do. That the president of the United States does it means he is operating from the fringes of American society.

No president in modern times has ever strayed so far from the center. No commander-in-chief has ever been as optimistic about a savage enemy.

Barack Obama is flirting with unprecedented disaster. His and America’s.

MAYOR’S JUNKIE AID NEEDLES TAXPAYERS

It didn’t take Mayor Bloomberg long to deliver on his promise to come up with fresh ideas in his third term. No sooner did he finish the oath than The Post found a Health Department pamphlet that teaches heroin addicts how to shoot up safely.

Wow! We’ve certainly never before seen anything as fresh and far outside the box as that one, so file the snazzy pamphlet under Promises Kept!

We assume instructions to “Warm your body (jump up and down) to show your veins,” and “Find the vein be fore you try to inject” are just the first of many helpful tips from City Hall in 2010. Surely, taxpayers won’t object to the $32,000 cost, seeing it as a reward for the privilege of paying the highest taxes in America. And junkies are people, too, you know.

Still, ordinary New Yorkers may have more use for other pamphlets in the works. I hear the NYPD is working on one that shows how to rob banks and stash the getaway car, and the Finance Department will provide tips on avoiding taxes.

And that’s not all. Because the city has so much of your money to spend, 311 operators are standing by to get new ideas. Our humble mayor promises to listen to you!

Remember to press 1 for English.

Democrats strong-arm Democracy

Evidence mounts that top Democrats are scared of democracy. The bosses would rather pick candidates themselves than leave it to voters.

First, President Obama tried to muscle Gov. Paterson out of this year’s race. Then Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Chuck Schumer tried to clear the field of primary opponents to protect a shaky Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

Now some black pols, including Rep. Charlie Rangel, are warning Attorney General Andrew Cuomo not to run against Paterson, saying it would inflame racial tensions.

Rangel actually told a reporter it would be a “moral decision” if Cuomo challenged the first black governor. Now there’s an oxymoron — Rangel and morals.

The only immorality here is in rigging the game so insiders can do an end-run around voters. Maybe Dem bosses never heard of Winston Churchill’s observation that “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

I say the more the merrier. Gillibrand has to prove herself worthy of getting two more years in the office she was handed.

I hope Paterson defies Obama to run, and I hope Cuomo runs against him. Competition is as important in the political marketplace as anywhere else.

It makes candidates sharper. For the rest of us, the opportunity and obligation to pick our representatives is the essence of “We the people.”

If they don’t think so, Democrats ought to change their party name to something more fitting. Maybe the Handpicked Party.

Better yet, the Bosses Party. That’s what it’s becoming.

Now THAT’S a stud

To claims Warren Beatty bedded 12,775 women, I have two words: Go, Tiger!